Denis Johnson, R.I.P.

     In general-education contemporary literature courses, I almost always taught Denis Johnson's "Emergency," and would often show the dramatization of the knife-in-the-eye scene with Jack Black as part of the film adaptation of Jesus' Son. I'd focus discussion on the three real or faux rescues or "life savings" in the story--the man with the knife, the rabbits, and the A.W.O.L. "boy" Hardee being driven to Canada, but I'd try to make time for Johnson's famous lines about the past as a rolled up scroll. Often I'd compare and contrast the role of substance use and abuse in the story to others such as Robert Stone's "Helping," Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," and Raymond Carver's "Cathedral." Once or twice I played the Lou Reed song "Heroin" that I assume the title of the Johnson collection came from. It wasn't until today that I learned that Johnson's story collection was partly inspired by Isaac Babel's Red Calvary stories, and, well, that is so cool. 
I like Jesus' Son and Angels, but Denis Johnson, great writer, was never my favorite. I believe I found Angels on my own as a Vintage paperback the winter I earned $8.00 per hour to be the manager of a remainders-only seasonal bookstore. I always enjoyed--and saw it as irony--that Philip Roth blurbed for the book because I don't connect Johnson with Roth, and I doubt you would either. I also found Exley's A Fan's Notes with his two others there, and the guy who trained me pointed out that I should grab a hardcover in a case of Chaim Potok's The Chosen, although I'm almost positive that to this day, I've seen the movie but haven't read the book.
Back to Johnson, I always thought it was somewhat of a cliche, all these 20-something MFA dudes high-fiving at AWP, "Drugs, confusion, and beautiful language. Man, Jesus' Son understands me." And I wonder if anyone who shows up online or at AWP as a publisher gets at least a dozen queries a year, maybe a month, that liken the possible collection to Jesus' Son.
Anyway, Johnson was a prolific major award-winner and seemingly financially successful, both as a writer and as a publisher, which makes it all the more bizarre, and makes me wonder if the guy even existed, or if he just showed up as our hallucination of what a writing life could be like in America.
I've never read Tree of Smoke, and I didn't realize that it would win the National Book Award when I read a superficial review trashing it as a joke, and I wonder if the writer of the review, B. R. Myers, is embarrassed to offer such a petty unjust reading of the book to the world. Or is this part of the price of fame? Was Johnson happy and successful enough at that point that he could laugh off a negative review? Or would it bother him even then? I don't know, but an online obituary says he never read them. It's tempting to track down Myers and see what's become of him. He's probably just working his ass off to survive as best he can.
Johnson: Great writer. Dead writer. . . what else?
Most likely a guy impersonating Denis Johnson once tweeted back to me something clever, but I can't remember what he said. Thankfully I can search, find, and add the link here. It's the two "n"s in his first name that leads me to believe he's a phony, and the response seems to have been to a Maurice Blanchot quotation: "This feeling of. . . uselessness of what I am doing is linked to this other feeling that nothing is more serious." But in fact, that was my response, and the original twonversation was about a typo, "distruption."
Somewhat in silly tribute, I'm reading and enjoying Train Dreams now, and Johnson, or our countrymen or even our ancestors, tortures an unlucky "Chinaman" in the opening scene, although the rail worker dangles, leaps, and survives. No doubt Johnson saw the United States very clearly. I'm glad the book is short, so I can do something to acknowledge his passing that doesn't take too much time away from the half zillion things I should be doing. Denis Johnson has passed on, but you and I are still here.

underground Persian poetry scene

Underground poet Iraj Fereshteh introduces us to ten voices from the margins composing poetry in contemporary Iran:

I slightly deviate from the routine of your page and, instead of providing a list of my favorite Iranian poets, introduce some contemporary Iranian poets less read in North America. My main criterion for these choices is how successfully the poets’ works have created space for new voices and expressive forms in Iranian poetics. What these writers have achieved is immense in that their contributions have occurred despite censorship at home and the discomforts of exile abroad. 

I recommend reading:

Granaz Moussav as a token of thousands of women poets in Iran, who have created a formidable voice in the country’s literary scene.

Maryam Hooleh for her formalistic experiments, especially for her aggressive, impatient, fragmented flooding metaphors. Also, for the multicultural multilingual (Kurdish-Persian) fabric of her poetry.

Fateme Ekhtesari for her postmodern ghazal movement (along with other post-ghazalists): for her modernization of the aging Persio-Arabic form Ghazal, and as importantly for re-popularizing the genre among the youth and hence generating thousands of young poetry readers.

Leili Galedaran for her “action poetry” and dramatizing her feminist language poetics on stage.

Saghi Ghahraman as an example of tens of Iranian queer poets, documenting the experiences of the LGBT community and constructing a strong contemporary Persian queer poetics—contributing to a several-century-old tradition in Persian literature.

Mohammad Azarm for elevating the earlier schools of Persian language poetry to higher levels by underlining the spatial and visual aspects of language, both on paper and on stage in his “performance poetry”.     

Ali Ghanbari for his genre games, blurring the genre lines between poetry and prose, and creating new genre possibilities in Persian poetry. 

Sasan Sheibaninejad for his postmodern “collage poetry”, in which he re-mixes ancient Iranian poetry with today’s language and decorates his contemporary poetry by sampling old masters’ words.       

Ali Abdali for his digital poetry and for code-composing Persian poetry into thought-provoking multimodal forms.

Reza Pishro as a voice from the powerhouse of Iranian hip hop. And because he dropped out of primary school, had no formal education when growing up in the street alleys of homelessness and addiction, yet today his audio texts are consumed by thousands—if not millions—of youth men and women.              

Iraj Fereshteh is an underground Iranian poet composing digital and found poetry. Follow the links here and here to listen to his poetry.

"Zoyd was out of smokes."

“Zoyd was out of smokes.” 
― Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

Winter, 1965 by Frederic Tuten

I enjoyed "Winter, 1965" by Frederic Tuten, which I chanced upon collected in the O'Henry Prize Stories 2016 and read in the library on a rainy morning this past week. Although it's a cliche for writers to write about the sad doubting lives of literary writers, it's also a cliche to criticize these same stories about writers. In any event, in the right mood, I'm a sucker for such tales, particularly if they have mention of critics past such as Philip Rahv while unpublished, alienated writers read Celine, fret, and ponder their future. 

It made sense that "Winter, 1965" would find me because in the few days before landing on it, I'd been mulling over the opening paragraph of Celine's Death on the Installment Plan: 

Here we are, alone again. It's all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . I'll be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. They've talked. They haven't said much. They've gone away. They've grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world.

But for now, not yet old, I move along to other literary things.

Top Ten Russian Novels!

L.U.S.K. is excited to feature a guest post from Aisha O'Connor-Fratus, writer, editor, parent, and blogger at Hell's Domestic Backside. Enjoy this list of Aisha's ten favorite Russian novels:

1. Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy, 1873 to 1877). Anna is rich and bored. Anna hates the way her husband chews his food. Count Vronsky—played by Christopher Reeve, so handsome) sweeps Anna off her feet! But things do not end well for Anna.

2. The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880). Not about a traveling circus acrobatic troupe. Its sweeping explorations of God, free agency, and morality are timeless and haunting. My favorite part is Ivan’s reciting of the poem “The Grand Inquisitor” in which Christ is resurrected during the Spanish Inquisition.

3. Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky, 1866). Life-long graduate student Rodion Raskolnikov tries to justify an unspeakably immoral act with eugenics and hey—a guy needs to eat.

4. Rudin (Ivan Turgenev, 1856). Dmitry Rudin talks the talk, but boy does he not walk the walk. Or is it talks the walk? Either way, he fails to get laid.

5. The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (Vladimir Voinovich, 1969). A peasant drafted into the Red Army is forgotten by his unit in a remote village (every Russian village is remote, natch) because he’s just not that memorable. The fellow takes care of a garden instead. Slapstick hilarity ensues.

6. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1962). Life in a Soviet prison labor camp is not as fun as you think it is.

7. Moscow 2042 (Vladimir Voinovich, 1986). A utopian-dystopian future in which Moscow becomes the communist epicenter of Russia. Like Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), Voinovich has called his novel “prophetic.”

8. Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (Nadezhda Mandelstam, 1970). Not a novel, but personal memoir forms the backbone of modern Russian lit, in my opinion. The wife of exiled poet Osip Mandelstam details the unthinkable hardships she endured during the Stalinist era.

9. Fathers and Sons (Ivan Turgenev, 1862). Like A River Runs Through It, but without the boring fly fishing, Brad Pitt, and Robert Redford’s droning voiceover. All the cool kids are embracing nihilism, but Pavel Kirsanov is having none of it.

10. War and Peace (Lev Tolstoy, 1869). Has anyone actually finished this book? I have not. Napoleon invades Russia. Beyond that, I have no more to say. 

Be sure to check out Aisha's blog and enjoy our earlier list of favorite Russian literature from Daniel Kalder.

used Strand $ > new Amazon

If you require shipping, Amazon's price for a new copy of Auggie's Revenge is less than The Strand's copy for a used one off the shelf. Who is to blame? What is to be done? Oy.

At least there is an online bookseller matching Amazon's price. . . 

J. Stands Up

I enjoyed this piece in The Paris Review on raising a son with "severe cognitive disabilities."